Israel Needs Stalwart Leadership by Allies to 'Finish the Job'

(Editor's Note: The following opinion column does not constitute an endorsement of any political party or candidate on the part of Newsmax.)

Benjamin Netanyahu, in an inspiring speech to Congress on July 24, emended Winston Churchill’s famous World War II appeal to Americans to “give us the tools [faster] and we’ll finish the job [faster].”

In the 12 weeks since the prime minister’s pledge, Israeli soldiers, airmen and sailors have destroyed the Hamas terrorist caliphate in Gaza, and seriously degraded Hezbollah, Iran’s terrorist proxy in Lebanon.

By contrast, in Churchill’s radio speech on Feb. 9, 1941, the vow to “finish the job” against Nazi Germany and fascist Italy was permanently upended by military developments over the next 10 months.

The British prime minister praised Greece’s repulsion of Mussolini’s invasion from Albania launched in Oct. 1940; and the British Commonwealth’s infliction of 150,000 casualties, beginning in Dec. 1940, in driving the Italian army out of western Egypt and eastern Libya.

But a few days after his speech, Nazi Germany dispatched Gen. Erwin Rommel to western Libya to command the Africa Corps, which was rapidly deploying to save the Italian dictator’s collapsing regime.

By mid-April 1941, German and Italian forces had driven British, Indian and Australian soldiers from Libya, except for the strategic port of Tobruk.

Furthermore, that same month, Nazi Germany invaded Yugoslavia and Greece, campaigns that ended in late May 1941 with the third seaborne retreat of British and other Allied soldiers from the European continent.

In the spring of 1940, British, French and other Allied soldiers escaped Norway and France after suffering devastating defeats by the Germans.

Thirdly, while Churchill claimed in the ‘give-us-the-tools’ speech that “this is not a war of vast armies, firing immense masses of shells at one another,” 3.8 million German, Finnish and Rumanian soldiers attacked 2.9 million Soviet Union soldiers on June 22, 1941, on an 1,800-mile front from the Baltic Sea the Black Sea,

This largest and most destructive land war in history raged uninterrupted until Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945. Tens of millions of combatants and civilians were killed on the Eastern Front.

Churchill’s fourth erroneous prediction in the Feb. 1941 speech pertained to America:

“In the last war, the United States sent 2 million men across the Atlantic … We do not need the gallant armies which are forming throughout the American Union … [not] this year, nor next year; nor any year that I can foresee.”

However, that same month, the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, commanded by Adm. Ernest J. King, was robustly protecting convoys transporting essential military and civilian materiel to the United Kingdom against predatory German submarines, in the intensifying yet undeclared naval war between America and Nazi Germany.

After Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and Germany’s and Italy’s declarations of war on America a few days later, the war widened to a worldwide conflict.

The U.S. mobilized 16.1 million fighting men: 11.2 million in Army; 4.2 million Navy; and 700,000 Marines. It was the only country that fought and triumphed across the globe.

The British Commonwealth’s only permanent victories in 1941 occurred in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Iran and East Africa. They were not against the Germans, but against Italian and Vichy French combatants and local soldiers.

In early April 1941, as Rommel’s Africa Corps was battering Commonwealth forces in eastern Libya, a coup against the pro-Allies government in Iraq was fomented by a group of military officers led by Rashid Ali al-Gaylani and Amin al-Husseini, the former mufti of Jerusalem.

Churchill dispatched soldiers and pilots from India and Palestine, who crushed the revolt and restored the former government in early June 1941.

Since the Vichy French militaries and governments in Lebanon and Syria had supported the anti-British coup in Baghdad, Commonwealth forces immediately attacked them from Palestine and Iraq, with the Allies emerging victorious six weeks later.

In late August 1941, soldiers of the Soviet Union, now allied with the democratic nations, and those from the British Commonwealth who had just liberated the other three Middle Eastern nations, invaded Iran and quickly deposed Reza Shah Pahlavi, who was angling to join Nazi Germany, and installed his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

The “Persian Corridor” was an indispensable route for the massive American Lend Lease supplies for the Soviet armed forces between 1941 and 1945.

More than eight decades later, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s brilliant, one-year military campaigns on seven fronts against Iran and its terrorist proxies resemble those waged by the Allies in the Middle East in 1941.

In addition to Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, the fronts are in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Judea/Samaria.

Unfortunately, many Western democratic leaders today, including President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, don’t have spines of steel of a Churchill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Netanyahu.

Instead, they are the Lilliputian descendants of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier, the appeasers who cravenly surrendered to Hitler and Mussolini at Munich in late Sept. 1938.

Hopefully, this year and 2025 will see the election of stalwart leaders, including Donald Trump in America and Pierre Poilievre in Canada, who will join with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to defeat the Russian and Iranian axis of evil in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.